1869
THE INNOCENTS ABROAD
by Mark Twain
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
PREFACE
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THIS book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a
solemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity,
that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are
so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet
notwithstanding it is only a record of a picnic, it has a purpose,
which is, to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to see
Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead
of the eyes of those who traveled in those countries before him. I
make small pretense of showing any one how he ought to look at objects
of interest beyond the sea- other books do that, and therefore, even
if I were competent to do it, there is no need.
I offer no apologies for any departures from the usual style of
travel-writing that may be charged against me- for I think I have seen
with impartial eyes, and I am sure I have written at least honestly,
whether wisely or not.
The Author.
SAN FRANCISCO.
CHAPTER I
WE GO TO SEE KINGS
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FOR months the great Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy
Land was chatted about in the newspapers everywhere in America, and
discussed at countless firesides. It was a novelty in the way of
excursions- its like had not been thought of before, and it
compelled that interest which attractive novelties always command.
It was to be a picnic on a gigantic scale. The participants in it,
instead of freighting an ungainly steam ferry-boat with youth and
beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up some obscure creek to
disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves out with a long
summer day's laborious frolicking under the impression that it was
fun, were to sail away in a great steamship with flags flying and
cannon pealing, and take a royal holiday beyond the broad ocean, in
many a strange clime and in many a land renowned in history! They were
to sail for months over the breezy Atlantic and the sunny
Mediterranean; they were to scamper about the decks by day, filling
the ship with shouts and laughter- or read novels and poetry in the
shade of the smoke-stacks, or watch for the jellyfish and the
nautilus, over the side, and the shark, the whale, and other strange
monsters of the deep; and at night they were to dance in the open air,
on the upper deck, in the midst of a ballroom that stretched from
horizon to horizon, and was domed by the bending heavens and lighted
by no meaner lamps than the stars and the magnificent moon- dance, and
promenade, and smoke, and sing, and make love, and search the skies
for constellations that never associate with the "Big Dipper" they
were so tired of: and they were to see the ships of twenty navies- the
customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples- the great cities of
half a world- they were to hobnob with nobility and hold friendly
converse with kings and princes, Grand Moguls, and the anointed
lords of mighty empires!
It was a brave conception; it was the offspring of a most
ingenious brain. It was well advertised, but it hardly needed it:
the bold originality, the extraordinary character, the seductive
nature, and the vastness of the enterprise provoked comment everywhere
and advertised it in every household in the land. Who could read the
program of the excursion without longing to make one of the party? I
will insert it here. It is almost as good as a map. As a text for this
book, nothing could be better:
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EXCURSION TO THE HOLY LAND, EGYPT, THE
CRIMEA, GREECE, AND INTERMEDIATE
POINTS OF INTEREST.
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BROOKLYN, February 1st, 1867.
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THE undersigned will make an excursion as above during the coming
season, and begs to submit to you the following program:
A first-class steamer, to be under his own command, and capable of
accommodating at least one hundred and fifty cabin passengers, will be
selected, in which will be taken a select company, numbering not
more than three-fourths of the ship's capacity. There is good reason
to believe that this company can be easily made up in this immediate
vicinity, of mutual friends and acquaintances.
The steamer will be provided with every necessary comfort, including
library and musical instruments.
An experienced physician will be on board.
Leaving New York about June 1st, a middle and pleasant route will be
taken across the Atlantic, and, passing through the group of Azores,
St. Michael will be reached in about ten days. A day or two will be
spent here, enjoying the fruit and wild scenery of these islands,
and the voyage continued, and Gibraltar reached in three or four days.
A day or two will be spent here in looking over the wonderful
subterraneous fortifications, permission to visit these galleries
being readily obtained.
From Gibraltar, running along the coasts of Spain and France,
Marseilles will be reached in three days. Here ample time will be
given not only to look over the city, which was founded six hundred
years before the Christian era, and its artificial port, the finest of
the kind in the Mediterranean, but to visit Paris during the Great
Exhibition; and the beautiful city of Lyons, lying intermediate,
from the heights of which, on a clear day, Mont Blanc and the Alps can
be distinctly seen. Passengers who may wish to extend the time at
Paris can do so, and, passing down through Switzerland, rejoin the
steamer at Genoa.
From Marseilles to Genoa is a run of one night. The excursionists
will have an opportunity to look over this, the "magnificent city of
palaces," and visit the birthplace of Columbus, twelve miles off, over
a beautiful road built by Napoleon I. From this point, excursions
may be made to Milan, Lakes Como and Maggiore, or to Milan, Verona
(famous for its extraordinary fortifications), Padua, and Venice.
Or, if passengers desire to visit Palma (famous for Correggio's
frescoes) and Bologna, they can by rail go on to Florence, and
rejoin the steamer at Leghorn, thus spending about three weeks amid
the cities most famous for art in Italy.
From Genoa the run to Leghorn will be made along the coast in one
night, and time appropriated to this point in which to visit Florence,
its palaces and galleries; Pisa, its Cathedral and "Leaning Tower,"
and Lucca and its baths and Roman amphitheater; Florence, the most
remote, being distant by rail about sixty miles.
From Leghorn to Naples (calling at Civita Vecchia to land any who
may prefer to go to Rome from that point) the distance will be made in
about thirty-six hours; the route will lay along the coast of Italy,
close by Caprera, Elba, and Corsica. Arrangements have been made to
take on board at Leghorn a pilot for Caprera, and, if practicable, a
call will be made there to visit the home of Garibaldi.
Rome (by rail), Herculaneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Virgil's tomb, and
possibly, the ruins of Paestum, can be visited, as well as the
beautiful surroundings of Naples and its charming bay.
The next point of interest will be Palermo, the most beautiful
city of Sicily, which will be reached in one night from Naples. A
day will be spent here, and, leaving in the evening, the course will
be taken toward Athens.
Skirting along the north coast of Sicily, passing through the
group of Aeolian Isles, in sight of Stromboli and Vulcania, both
active volcanoes, through the Straits of Messina, with "Scylla" on the
one hand and "Charybdis" on the other, along the east coast of Sicily,
and in sight of Mount Aetna, along the south coast of Italy, the
west and south coast of Greece, in sight of ancient Crete, up Athens
Gulf, and into the Piraeus, Athens will be reached in two and a half
or three days. After tarrying here awhile, the Bay of Salamis will
be crossed, and a day given to Corinth, whence the voyage will be
continued to Constantinople, passing on the way through the Grecian
Archipelago, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the mouth of the
Golden Horn, and arriving in about forty-eight hours from Athens.
After leaving Constantinople, the way will be taken out through
the beautiful Bosphorus, across the Black Sea to Sebastopol and
Balaklava, a run of about twenty-four hours. Here it is proposed to
remain two days, visiting the harbors, fortifications, and
battle-fields of the Crimea; thence back through the Bosphorus,
touching at Constantinople to take in any who may have preferred to
remain there; down through the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles,
along the coasts of ancient Troy and Lydia in Asia, to Smyrna, which
will be reached in two or two and a half days from Constantinople. A
sufficient stay will be made here to give opportunity of visiting
Ephesus, fifty miles distant by rail.
From Smyrna toward the Holy Land the course will lay through the
Grecian Archipelago, close by the Isle of Patmos, along the coast of
Asia, ancient Pamphylia, and the Isle of Cyprus. Beirout will be
reached in three days. At Beirout time will be given to visit
Damascus; after which the steamer will proceed to Joppa.
From Joppa, Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of Tiberias,
Nazareth, Bethany, Bethlehem, and other points of interest in the Holy
Land can be visited, and here those who may have preferred to make the
journey from Beirout through the country, passing through Damascus,
Galilee, Capernaum, Samaria, and by the River Jordan and Sea of
Tiberias, can rejoin the steamer.
Leaving Joppa, the next point of interest to visit will be
Alexandria, which will be reached in twenty-four hours. The ruins of
Caesar's Palace, Pompey's Pillar, Cleopatra's Needle, the Catacombs,
and ruins of ancient Alexandria, will be found worth the visit. The
journey to Cairo, one hundred and thirty miles by rail, can be made in
a few hours, and from which can be visited the site of ancient
Memphis, Joseph's Granaries, and the Pyramids.
From Alexandria the route will be taken homeward, calling at
Malta, Cagliari (in Sardinia), and Palma (in Majorca), all magnificent
harbors, with charming scenery, and abounding in fruits.
A day or two will be spent at each place, and leaving Palma in the
evening, Valencia in Spain will be reached the next morning. A few
days will be spent in this, the finest city of Spain.
From Valencia, the homeward course will be continued, skirting along
the coast of Spain. Alicante, Carthagena, Palos, and Malaga will be
passed but a mile or two distant, and Gibraltar reached in about
twenty-four hours.
A stay of one day will be made here, and the voyage continued to
Madeira, which will be reached in about three days. Captain Marryat
writes: "I do not know a spot on the globe which so much astonishes
and delights upon first arrival as Madeira." A stay of one or two days
will be made here, which, if time permits, may be extended, and
passing on through the islands, and probably in sight of the Peak of
Teneriffe, a southern track will be taken, and the Atlantic crossed
within the latitudes of the northeast trade-winds, where mild and
pleasant weather and a smooth sea can always be expected.
A call will be made at Bermuda, which lies directly in this route
homeward, and will be reached in about ten days from Madeira, and
after spending a short time with our friends the Bermudians, the final
departure will be made for home, which will be reached in about
three days.
Already, applications have been received from parties in Europe
wishing to join the Excursion there.
The ship will at all times be a home, where the excursionists, if
sick, will be surrounded by kind friends, and have all possible
comfort and sympathy.
Should contagious sickness exist in any of the ports named in the
program, such ports will be passed, and others of interest
substituted.
The price of passage is fixed at $1,250, currency, for each adult
passenger. Choice of rooms and of seats at the tables apportioned in
the order in which passages are engaged, and no passage considered
engaged until ten per cent of the passage money is deposited with
the treasurer.
Passengers can remain on board of the steamer at all ports, if
they desire, without additional expense, and all boating at the
expense of the ship.
All passages must be paid for when taken, in order that the most
perfect arrangements be made for starting at the appointed time.
Applications for passage must be approved by the committee before
tickets are issued, and can be made to the undersigned.
Articles of interest or curiosity, procured by the passengers during
the voyage, age, may be brought home in the steamer free of charge.
Five dollars per day, in gold, it is believed, will be a fair
calculation to make for all traveling expenses on shore, and at the
various points where passengers may wish to leave the steamer for days
at a time.
The trip can be extended, and the route changed, by unanimous vote
of the passengers.
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CHAS. C. DUNCAN,
117 WALL STREET, NEW YORK.
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R.R. G__, Treasurer.
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COMMITTEE ON APPLICATIONS.
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J.T. H__, Esq., R.R. G__, Esq., C.C. DUNCAN.
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COMMITTEE ON SELECTING STEAMER.
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CAPT. W.W. S__, Surveyor for Board of Underwriters.
C.W. C__, Consulting Engineer for U.S. and Canada.
J.T. H__, Esq.
C.C. DUNCAN.
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P. S. The very beautiful and substantial side-wheel steamship Quaker
City has been chartered for the occasion, and will leave New York,
June 8th. Letters have been issued by the government commending the
party to courtesies abroad.
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What was there lacking about that program, to make it perfectly
irresistible? Nothing, that any finite mind could discover. Paris,
England, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy- Garibaldi! The Grecian
Archipelago! Vesuvius! Constantinople! Smyrna! The Holy Land! Egypt
and "our friends the Bermudians"! People in Europe desiring to join
the Excursion- contagious sickness to be avoided- boating at the
expense of the ship- physician on board- the circuit of the globe to
be made if the passengers unanimously desired it- the company to be
rigidly selected by a pitiless "Committee on Applications"- the vessel
to be as rigidly selected by as pitiless a "Committee on Selecting
Steamer." Human nature could not withstand these bewildering
temptations. I hurried to the treasurer's office and deposited my
ten per cent. I rejoiced to know that a few vacant staterooms were
still left. I did avoid a critical personal examination into my
character, by that bowelless committee, but I referred to all the
people of high standing I could think of in the community who would be
least likely to know anything about me.
Shortly a supplementary program was issued which set forth that
the Plymouth Collection of Hymns would be used on board the ship. I
then paid the balance of my passage money.
I was provided with a receipt, and duly and officially accepted as
an excursionist. There was happiness in that, but it was tame compared
to the novelty of being "select."
This supplementary program also instructed the excursionists to
provide themselves with light musical instruments for amusement in the
ship; with saddles for Syrian travel; green spectacles and
umbrellas; veils for Egypt; and substantial clothing to use in rough
pilgrimizing in the Holy Land. Furthermore, it was suggested that
although the ship's library would afford a fair amount of
reading-matter, it would still be well if each passenger would provide
himself with a few guide-books, a Bible, and some standard works of
travel. A list was appended, which consisted chiefly of books relating
to the Holy Land, since the Holy Land was part of the excursion and
seemed to be its main feature.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was to have accompanied the expedition,
but urgent duties obliged him to give up the idea. There were other
passengers who could have been spared better, and would have been
spared more willingly. Lieutenant-General Sherman was to have been
of the party, also, but the Indian war compelled his presence on the
plains. A popular actress had entered her name on the ship's books,
but something interfered, and she couldn't go. The "Drummer Boy of the
Potomac" deserted, and lo, we had never a celebrity left!
However, we were to have a "battery of guns" from the Navy
Department (as per advertisement), to be used in answering royal
salutes; and the document furnished by the Secretary of the Navy,
which was to make "General Sherman and party" welcome guests in the
courts and camps of the Old World, was still left to us, though both
document and battery, I think, were shorn of somewhat of their
original august proportions. However, had not we the seductive
program, still, with its Paris, its Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem,
Jericho, and "our friends the Bermudians"? What did we care?
CHAPTER II
PADDLE-WHEELS GO 'ROUND
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OCCASIONALLY, during the following month, I dropped in at 117 Wall
Street to inquire how the repairing and refurnishing of the vessel was
coming on; how additions to the passenger-list were averaging; how
many people the committee were decreeing not "select," every day,
and banishing in sorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we
were to have a little printing-press on board and issue a daily
newspaper of our own. I was glad to learn that our piano, our parlor
organ, and our melodeon were to be the best instruments of the kind
that could be had in the market. I was proud to observe that among our
excursionists were three ministers of the gospel, eight doctors,
sixteen or eighteen ladies, several military and naval chieftains with
sounding titles, an ample crop of "Professors" of various kinds, and a
gentleman who had "COMMISSIONER OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO
EUROPE, ASIA, and AFRICA" thundering after his name in one awful
blast! I had carefully prepared myself to take rather a back seat in
that ship, because of the uncommonly select material that would
alone be permitted to pass through the camel's eye of that committee
on credentials; I had schooled myself to expect an imposing array of
military and naval heroes, and to have to set that back seat still
further back in consequence of it, maybe; but I state frankly that I
was all unprepared for this crusher.
I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. I
said that if that potentate must go over in our ship, why, I
supposed he must- but that to my thinking, when the United States
considered it necessary to send a dignitary of that tonnage across the
ocean, it would be in better taste, and safer, to take him apart and
cart him over in sections, in several ships.
Ah, if I had only known, then, that he was only a common mortal, and
that his mission had nothing more overpowering about it than the
collecting of seeds, and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages
and peculiar bullfrogs for that poor, useless, innocent, mildewed
old fossil, the Smithsonian Institute, I would have felt so much
relieved.
During that memorable month I basked in the happiness of being for
once in my life drifting with the tide of a great popular movement.
Everybody was going to Europe- I, too, was going to Europe.
Everybody was going to the famous Paris Exposition- I, too, was
going to the Paris Exposition. The steamship lines were carrying
Americans out of the various ports of the country at the rate of
four or five thousand a week, in the aggregate. If I met a dozen
individuals, during that month, who were not going to Europe
shortly, I have no distinct remembrance of it now. I walked about
the city a good deal with a young Mr. Blucher, who was booked for
the excursion. He was confiding, good-natured, unsophisticated,
companionable; but he was not a man to set the river on fire. He had
the most extraordinary notions about this European exodus, and came at
last to consider the whole nation as packing up for emigration to
France. We stepped into a store in Broadway, one day, where he
bought a handkerchief, and when the man could not make change, Mr.
B. said:
"Never mind, I'll hand it to you in Paris."
"But I am not going to Paris."
"How is- what did I understand you to say?"
"I said I am not going to Paris."
"Not going to Paris! Not g- well then, where in the nation are you
going to?"
"Nowhere at all."
"Not anywhere whatsoever?- not any place on earth but this?"
"Not any place at all but just this- stay here all summer."
My comrade took his purchase and walked out of the store without a
word- walked out with an injured look upon his countenance. Up the
street apiece he broke silence and said impressively: "It was a lie-
that is my opinion of it!"
In the fullness of time the ship was ready to receive her
passengers. I was introduced to the young gentleman who was to be my
room-mate, and found him to be intelligent, cheerful of spirit,
unselfish, full of generous impulses, patient, considerate, and
wonderfully good-natured. Not any passenger that sailed in the
Quaker City will withhold his indorsement of what I have just said. We
selected a stateroom forward of the wheel, on the starboard side,
"below decks." It had two berths in it, a dismal dead-light, a sink
with a wash-bowl in it, and a long sumptuously cushioned locker, which
was to do service as a sofa- partly, and partly as a hiding-place
for our things. Notwithstanding all this furniture, there was still
room to turn around in, but not swing a cat in, at least with entire
security to the cat. However, the room was large, for a ship's
stateroom, and was in every way satisfactory.
The vessel was appointed to sail on a certain Saturday early in
June.
A little after noon, on that distinguished Saturday, I reached the
ship and went on board. All was bustle and confusion. [I have seen
that remark before, somewhere.] The pier was crowded with carriages
and men; passengers were arriving and hurrying on board; the
vessel's decks were encumbered with trunks and valises; groups of
excursionists, arrayed in unattractive traveling-costumes, were moping
about in a drizzling rain and looking as droopy and woebegone as so
many molting chickens. The gallant flag was up, but it was under the
spell, too, and hung limp and disheartened by the mast. Altogether, it
was the bluest, bluest spectacle! It was a pleasure excursion- there
was no gainsaying that, because the program said so- it was so
nominated in the bond- but it surely hadn't the general aspect of one.
Finally, above the banging, and rumbling, and shouting and hissing
of steam, rang the order to "cast off!"- a sudden rush to the
gangways- a scampering ashore of visitors- a revolution of the wheels,
and we were off- the picnic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up
from the dripping crowd on the pier; we answered them gently from
the slippery decks; the flag made an effort to wave, and failed; the
"battery of guns" spake not- the ammunition was out.
We steamed down to the foot of the harbor and came to anchor. It was
still raining. And not only raining, but storming. "Outside" we
could see, ourselves, that there was a tremendous sea on. We must
lie still, in the calm harbor, till the storm should abate. Our
passengers hailed from fifteen states; only a few of them had ever
been to sea before; manifestly it would not do to pit them against a
full-blown tempest until they had got their sea-legs on. Toward
evening the two steam-tugs that had accompanied us with a rollicking
champagne party of young New-Yorkers on board who wished to bid
farewell to one of our number in due and ancient form, departed, and
we were alone on the deep. On deep five fathoms, and anchored fast
to the bottom. And out in the solemn rain, at that. This was
pleasuring with a vengeance.
It was an appropriate relief when the gong sounded for
prayer-meeting. The first Saturday night of any other pleasure
excursion might have been devoted to whist and dancing; but I submit
it to the unprejudiced mind if it would have been in good taste for us
to engage in such frivolities, considering what we had gone through
and the frame of mind we were in. We would have shone at a wake, but
not at anything more festive.
However, there is always a cheering influence about the sea; and
in my berth, that night, rocked by the measured swell of the waves,
and lulled by the murmur of the distant surf, I soon passed tranquilly
out of all consciousness of the dreary experiences of the day and
damaging premonitions of the future.
CHAPTER III
FINE DAY AT SEA? "OH, MY!"
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ALL day Sunday at anchor. The storm had gone down a great deal,
but the sea had not. It was still piling its frothy hills high in
air "out-side," as we could plainly see with the glasses. We could not
properly begin a pleasure excursion on Sunday; we could not offer
untried stomachs to so pitiless a sea as that. We must lie still
till Monday. And we did. But we had repetitions of church and
prayer-meetings; and so, of course, we were just as eligibly
situated as we could have been anywhere.
I was up early that Sabbath morning, and was early to breakfast. I
felt a perfectly natural desire to have a good, long, unprejudiced
look at the passengers, at a time when they should be free from
self-consciousness- which is at breakfast, when such a moment occurs
in the lives of human beings at all.
I was greatly surprised to see so many elderly people- I might
almost say, so many venerable people. A glance at the long lines of
heads was apt to make one think it was all gray. But it was not. There
was a tolerably fair sprinkling of young folks, and another fair
sprinkling of gentlemen and ladies who were non-committal as to age,
being neither actually old nor absolutely young.
The next morning, we weighed anchor and went to sea. It was a
great happiness to get away, after this dragging, dispiriting delay. I
thought there never was such gladness in the air before, such
brightness in the sun, such beauty in the sea. I was satisfied with
the picnic, then, and with all its belongings. All my malicious
instincts were dead within me; and as America faded out of sight, I
think a spirit of charity rose up in their place that was as
boundless, for the time being, as the broad ocean that was heaving its
billows about us. I wished to express my feelings- I wished to lift up
my voice and sing, but I did not know anything to sing, and so I was
obliged to give up the idea. It was no loss to the ship though,
perhaps.
It was breezy and pleasant, but the sea was still very rough. One
could not promenade without risking his neck; at one moment the
bowsprit was taking a deadly aim at the sun in mid-heaven, and at
the next it was trying to harpoon a shark in the bottom of the
ocean. What a weird sensation it is to feel the stern of a ship
sinking swiftly from under you and see the bow climbing high away
among the clouds! One's safest course, that day, was to clasp a
railing and hang on; walking was too precarious a pastime.
By some happy fortune I was not seasick. That was a thing to be
proud of. I had not always escaped before. If there is one thing in
the world that will make a man peculiarly and insufferably
self-conceited, it is to have his stomach behave itself, the first day
at sea, when nearly all his comrades are seasick. Soon, a venerable
fossil, shawled to the chin and bandaged like a mummy, appeared at the
door of the after deck-house, and the next lurch of the ship shot
him into my arms. I said:
"Good morning, sir. It is a fine day."
He put his hand on his stomach and said, "Oh, my!" and then
staggered away and fell over the coop of a skylight.
Presently another old gentleman was projected from the same door,
with great violence. I said:
"Calm yourself, sir. There is no hurry. It is a fine day, sir."
He, also, put his hand on his stomach and said "Oh, my!" and
reeled away.
In a little while another veteran was discharged abruptly from the
same door, clawing at the air for a saving support. I said:
"Good morning, sir. It is a fine day for pleasuring. You were
about to say-"
"Oh, my!"
I thought so. I anticipated him, anyhow. I stayed there and was
bombarded with old gentlemen for an hour, perhaps; and all I got out
of any of them was "Oh, my!"
I went away, then, in a thoughtful mood. I said, this is a good
pleasure excursion. I like it. The passengers are not garrulous, but
still they are sociable. I like those old people, but somehow they all
seem to have the "Oh, my" rather bad.
I knew what was the matter with them. They were seasick. And I was
glad of it. We all like to see people seasick when we are not,
ourselves. Playing whist by the cabin lamps, when it is storming
outside, is pleasant; walking the quarter-deck in the moonlight is
pleasant; smoking in the breezy foretop is pleasant, when one is not
afraid to go up there; but these are all feeble and commonplace
compared with the joy of seeing people suffering the miseries of
seasickness.
I picked up a good deal of information during the afternoon. At
one time I was climbing up the quarter-deck when the vessel's stern
was in the sky; I was smoking a cigar and feeling passably
comfortable. Somebody ejaculated:
"Come, now, that won't answer. Read the sign up there- NO SMOKING
ABAFT THE WHEEL!"
It was Captain Duncan, chief of the expedition. I went forward, of
course. I saw a long spy-glass lying on a desk in one of the
upper-deck staterooms back of the pilot-house, and reached after it-
there was a ship in the distance:
"Ah, ah- hands off! Come out of that!"
I came out of that. I said to a deck-sweep- but in a low voice:
"Who is that overgrown pirate with the whiskers and the discordant
voice?"
"It's Captain Bursley- executive officer- sailing-master."
I loitered about awhile, and then, for want of something better to
do, fell to carving a railing with my knife. Somebody said, in an
insinuating, admonitory voice:
"Now, say- my friend- don't you know any better than to be whittling
the ship all to pieces that way? You ought to know better than that."
I went back and found the deck-sweep:
"Who is that smooth-faced animated outrage yonder in the fine
clothes?"
"That's Captain L__, the owner of the ship- he's one of the main
bosses."
In the course of time I brought up on the starboard side of the
pilot-house, and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now, I said, they
"take the sun" through this thing; I should think I might see that
vessel through it. I had hardly got it to my eye when some one touched
me on the shoulder and said, deprecatingly:
"I'll have to get you to give that to me, sir. If there's anything
you'd like to know about taking the sun, I'd as soon tell you as
not- but I don't like to trust anybody with that instrument. If you
want any figuring done- Aye-aye, sir!"
He was gone, to answer a call from the other side. I sought the
deck-sweep:
"Who is that spider-legged gorilla yonder with the sanctimonious
countenance?"
"It's Captain Jones, sir- the chief mate."
"Well. This goes clear away ahead of anything I ever heard of
before. Do you- now I ask you as a man and a brother- do you think I
could venture to throw a rock here in any given direction without
hitting a captain of this ship?"
"Well, sir, I don't know- I think likely you'd fetch the captain
of the watch, maybe, because he's a-standing right yonder in the way."
I went below- meditating, and a little down-hearted. I thought, if
five cooks can spoil a broth, what may not five captains do with a
pleasure excursion.
CHAPTER IV
OUR SINGING PROVOKES HEAD-WINDS
-
WE plowed along bravely for a week or more, and without any conflict
of jurisdiction among the captains worth mentioning. The passengers
soon learned to accommodate themselves to their new circumstances, and
life in the ship became nearly as systematically monotonous as the
routine of a barrack. I do not mean that it was dull, for it was not
entirely so by any means- but there was a good deal of sameness
about it. As is always the fashion at sea, the passengers shortly
began to pick up sailor terms- a sign that they were beginning to feel
at home. Half past six was no longer half past six to these pilgrims
from New England, the South, and the Mississippi Valley, it was "seven
bells"; eight, twelve, and four o'clock were "eight bells"; the
captain did not take the longitude at nine o'clock, but at "two
bells." They spoke glibly of the "after cabin," the "for'rard
cabin," "port and starboard," and the "fo'castle."
At seven bells the first gong rang; at eight there was breakfast,
for such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well
people walked arm-in-arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying
the fine summer mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped
themselves up in the lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal
tea and toast, and looked wretched. From eleven o'clock until
luncheon, and from luncheon until dinner at six in the evening, the
employments and amusements were various. Some reading was done; and
much smoking and sewing, though not by the same parties; there were
the monsters of the deep to be looked after and wondered at; strange
ships had to be scrutinized through opera-glasses, and sage
decisions arrived at concerning them; and more than that, everybody
took a personal interest in seeing that the flag was run up and
politely dipped three times in response to the salutes of those
strangers; in the smoking-room there were always parties of
gentlemen playing euchre, draughts, and dominoes, especially dominoes,
that delightfully harmless game; and down on the main deck,
"for'rard"- for'rard of the chicken-coops and the cattle- we had
what was called "horse-billiards." Horse-billiards is a fine game.
It affords good, active exercise, hilarity, and consuming
excitement. It is a mixture of "hop-scotch" and shuffle-board played
with a crutch. A large "hop-scotch" diagram is marked out on the
deck with chalk, and each compartment numbered. You stand off three or
four steps, with some broad wooden disks before you on the deck, and
these you send forward with a vigorous thrust of a long crutch. If a
disk stops on a chalk line, it does not count anything. If it stops in
division No. 7, it counts 7; in 5, it counts 5, and so on. The game is
100, and four can play at a time. That game would be very simple,
played on a stationary floor, but with us, to play it well required
science. We had to allow for the reeling of the ship to the right or
the left. Very often one made calculations for a heel to the right and
the ship did not go that way. The consequence was that that disk
missed the whole hop-scotch plan a yard or two, and then there was
humiliation on one side and laughter on the other.
When it rained, the passengers had to stay in the house, of
course- or at least the cabins- and amuse themselves with games,
reading, looking out of the windows at very familiar billows, and
talking gossip.
By seven o'clock in the evening, dinner was about over; an hour's
promenade on the upper deck followed; then the gong sounded and a
large majority of the party repaired to the after cabin (upper), a
handsome saloon fifty or sixty feet long, for prayers. The
unregenerated called this saloon the "Synagogue." The devotions
consisted only of two hymns from the "Plymouth Collection," and a
short prayer, and seldom occupied more than fifteen minutes. The hymns
were accompanied by parlor organ music when the sea was smooth
enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without being
lashed to his chair.
After prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of a
writing-school. The like of that picture was never seen in a ship
before. Behind the long dining-tables on either side of the saloon,
and scattered from one end to the other of the latter, some twenty
or thirty gentlemen and ladies sat them down under the swaying
lamps, and for two or three hours wrote diligently in their
journals. Alas! that journals so voluminously begun should come to
so lame and impotent a conclusion as most of them did! I doubt if
there is a single pilgrim of all that host but can show a hundred fair
pages of journal concerning the first twenty days' voyaging in the
Quaker City; and I am morally certain that not ten of the party can
show twenty pages of journal for the succeeding twenty thousand
miles of voyaging! At certain periods it becomes the dearest
ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a
book; and he dashes at his work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him
the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world,
and the pleasantest. But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will
find out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck,
endurance, devotion to duty for duty's sake, and invincible
determination, may hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as
the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat.
One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow with a
head full of good sense, and a pair of legs that were a wonder to look
upon in the way of length and straightness and slimness, used to
report progress every morning in the most glowing and spirited way,
and say:
"Oh, I'm coming along bully!" (he was a little given to slang, in
his happier moods) "I wrote ten pages in my journal last night- and
you know I wrote nine the night before, and twelve the night before
that. Why, it's only fun!"
"What do you find to put in it, Jack?"
"Oh, everything. Latitude and longitude, noon every day; and how
many miles we made last twenty-four hours; and all the domino games
I beat, and horse-billiards; and whales and sharks and porpoises;
and the text of the sermon, Sundays (because that 'll tell at home,
you know); and the ships we saluted and what nation they were; and
which way the wind was, and whether there was a heavy sea, and what
sail we carried, though we don't ever carry any, principally, going
against a head wind always- wonder what is the reason of that?- and
how many lies Moult has told- Oh, everything! I've got everything
down. My father told me to keep that journal. Father wouldn't take a
thousand dollars for it when I get it done."
"No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars- when you
get it done."
"Do you?- no, but do you think it will, though?"
"Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dollars-
when you get it done. Maybe, more."
"Well, I about half think so, myself. It ain't no slouch of a
journal."
But it shortly became a most lamentable "slouch of a journal." One
night in Paris, after a hard day's toil in sight-seeing, I said:
"Now I'll go and stroll around the cafes awhile, Jack, and give
you a chance to write up your journal, old fellow."
His countenance lost its fire. He said:
"Well, no, you needn't mind. I think I won't run that journal any
more. It is awful tedious. Do you know- I reckon I'm as much as four
thousand pages behindhand. I haven't got any France in it at all.
First I thought I'd leave France out and start fresh. But that
wouldn't do, would it? The governor would say, 'Hello, here- didn't
see anything in France?' That cat wouldn't fight, you know. First I
thought I'd copy France out of the guidebook, like old Badger in the
for'rard cabin who's writing a book, but there's more than three
hundred pages of it. Oh, I don't think a journal's any use- do you?
They're only a bother, ain't they?"
"Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn't of much use, but a
journal properly kept is worth a thousand dollars,- when you've got it
done."
"A thousand!- well, I should think so. I wouldn't finish it for a
million."
His experience was only the experience of the majority of that
industrious night school in the cabin. If you wish to inflict a
heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him
to keep a journal a year.
A good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excursionists
amused and satisfied. A club was formed, of all the passengers,
which met in the writing-school after prayers and read aloud about the
countries we were approaching, and discussed the information so
obtained.
Several times the photographer of the expedition brought out his
transparent pictures and gave us a handsome magic-lantern
exhibition. His views were nearly all of foreign scenes, but there
were one or two home pictures among them. He advertised that he
would "open his performance in the after cabin at 'two bells' [9
p.m.], and show the passengers where they shall eventually arrive"-
which was all very well, but by a funny accident the first picture
that flamed out upon the canvas was a view of Greenwood Cemetery!
On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the
awnings, and made something of a ballroom display of brilliancy by
hanging a number of ship's lanterns to the stanchions. Our music
consisted of the well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little
asthmatic and apt to catch its breath where it ought to come out
strong; a clarinet which was a little unreliable on the high keys
and rather melancholy on the low ones; and a disreputable accordion
that had a leak somewhere and breathed louder than it squawked- a more
elegant term does not occur to me just now. However, the dancing was
infinitely worse than the music. When the ship rolled to starboard the
whole platoon of dancers came charging down to starboard with it,
and brought up in mass at the rail; and when it rolled to port, they
went floundering down to port with the same unanimity of sentiment.
Waltzers spun around precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds
and then went scurrying down to the rail as if they meant to go
overboard. The Virginia reel, as performed on board the Quaker City,
had more genuine reel about it than any reel I ever saw before, and
was as full of interest to the spectator as it was full of desperate
chances and hair-breadth escapes to the participant. We gave up
dancing, finally.
We celebrated a lady's birthday anniversary, with toasts,
speeches, a poem, and so forth. We also had a mock trial. No ship ever
went to sea that hadn't a mock trial on board. The purser was
accused of stealing an overcoat from stateroom No. 10. A judge was
appointed; also clerks, a crier of the court, constables, sheriffs;
counsel for the state and for the defendant; witnesses were
subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled after much challenging. The witnesses
were stupid and unreliable and contradictory, as witnesses always are.
The counsel were eloquent, argumentative, and vindictively abusive
of each other, as was characteristic and proper. The case was at
last submitted, and duly finished by the judge with an absurd decision
and a ridiculous sentence.
The acting of charades was tried, on several evenings, by the
young gentlemen and ladies, in the cabins, and proved the most
distinguished success of all the amusement experiments.
An attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it was a
failure. There was no oratorical talent in the ship.
We all enjoyed ourselves- I think I can safely say that, but it
was in a rather quiet way. We very, very seldom played the piano; we
played the flute and the clarinet together, and made good music,
too, what there was of it, but we always played the same old tune;
it was a very pretty tune- how well I remember it- I wonder when I
shall ever get rid of it. We never played either the melodeon or the
organ, except at devotions- but I am too fast; young Albert did know
part of a tune- something about "O Something-or-Other How Sweet it
is to Know that he's his What's-his-Name" (I do not remember the exact
title of it, but it was very plaintive, and full of sentiment); Albert
played that pretty much all the time, until we contracted with him
to restrain himself. But nobody ever sang by moonlight on the upper
deck, and the congregational singing at church and prayers was not
of a superior order of architecture. I put up with it as long as I
could, and then joined in and tried to improve it, but this encouraged
young George to join in, too, and that made a failure of it; because
George's voice was just "turning," and when he was singing a dismal
sort of bass, it was apt to fly off the handle and startle everybody
with a most discordant cackle on the upper notes. George didn't know
the tunes, either, which was also a drawback to his performances. I
said:
"Come, now, George, don't improvise. It looks too egotistical. It
will provoke remark. Just stick to 'Coronation,' like the others. It
is a good tune- you can't improve it any, just offhand, in this way."
"Why, I'm not trying to improve it- and I am singing like the
others- just as it is in the notes."
And he honestly thought he was, too; and so he had no one to blame
but himself when his voice caught on the center occasionally, and gave
him the lockjaw.
There were those among the unregenerated who attributed the
unceasing head-winds to our distressing choir music. There were
those who said openly that it was taking chances enough to have such
ghastly music going on, even when it was at its best; and that to
exaggerate the crime by letting George help, was simply flying in
the face of Providence. These said that the choir would keep up
their lacerating attempts at melody until they would bring down a
storm some day that would sink the ship.
There were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive officer said
the Pilgrims had no charity.
"There they are, down there every night at eight bells, praying
for fair winds- when they know as well as I do that this is the only
ship going east this time of the year, but there's a thousand coming
west- what's a fair wind for us is a head-wind to them- the Almighty's
blowing a fair wind for a thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him
to turn it clear around so as to accommodate one,- and she a steamship
at that! It ain't good sense, it ain't good reason, it ain't good
Christianity, it ain't common human charity. Avast with such
nonsense!"
CHAPTER V
THE WATCH THAT COULDN'T KEEP UP
-
TAKING it "by and large," as the sailors say, we had a pleasant
ten days' run from New York to the Azores islands- not a fast run, for
the distance is only twenty-four hundred miles- but a right pleasant
one, in the main. True, we had head-winds all the time, and several
stormy experiences which sent fifty per cent. of the passengers to
bed, sick, and made the ship look dismal and deserted- stormy
experiences that all will remember who weathered them on the
tumbling deck, and caught the vast sheets of spray that every now
and then sprang high in air from the weather bow and swept the ship
like a thunder-shower; but for the most part we had balmy summer
weather, and nights that were even finer than the days. We had the
phenomenon of a full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens
at the same hour every night. The reason of this singular conduct on
the part of the moon did not occur to us at first, but it did
afterward when we reflected that we were gaining about twenty
minutes every day, because we were going east so fast- we gained
just about enough every day to keep along with the moon. It was
becoming an old moon to the friends we had left behind us, but to us
Joshuas it stood still in the same place, and remained always the
same.
Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West, and is on his first
voyage, was a good deal worried by the constantly changing "ship
time." He was proud of his new watch at first, and used to drag it out
promptly when eight bells struck at noon, but he came to look after
a while as if he were losing confidence in it. Seven days out from New
York he came on deck, and said with great decision:
"This thing's a swindle!"
"What's a swindle?"
"Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois- gave $150 for her-
and I thought she was good. And, by George, she is good on shore,
but somehow she don't keep up her lick here on the water- gets
seasick, maybe. She skips; she runs along regular enough till
half-past eleven, and then, all of a sudden, she lets down. I've set
that old regulator up faster and faster, till I've shoved it clear
around, but it don't do any good; she just distances every watch in
the ship, and clatters along in a way that's astonishing till it is
noon, but them eight bells always gets in about ten minutes ahead of
her, anyway. I don't know what to do with her now. She's doing all she
can- she's going her best gait, but it won't save her. Now, don't
you know, there ain't a watch in the ship that's making better time
than she is; but what does it signify? When you hear them eight
bells you'll find her just about ten minutes short of her score,
sure."
The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow
was trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as
he had said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and
the watch was "on its best gait," and so nothing was left him but to
fold his hands and see the ship beat the race. We sent him to the
captain, and he explained to him the mystery of "ship time," and set
his troubled mind at rest. This young man asked a great many questions
about seasickness before we left, and wanted to know what its
characteristics were, and how he was to tell when he had it. He
found out.
We saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, etc., of course,
and by and by large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were added to the
regular list of sea-wonders. Some of them were white and some of a
brilliant carmine color. The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web
of jelly, that spreads itself to catch the wind, and has
fleshy-looking strings a foot or two long dangling from it to keep
it steady in the water. It is an accomplished sailor, and has good
sailor judgment. It reefs its sail when a storm threatens or the
wind blows pretty hard, and furls it entirely and goes down when a
gale blows. Ordinarily it keeps its sail wet and in good sailing order
by turning over and dipping it in the water for a moment. Seamen say
the nautilus is only found in these waters between the 35th and 45th
parallels of latitude.
At three o'clock on the morning of the 21st of June we were awakened
and notified that the Azores islands were in sight. I said I did not
take any interest in islands at three o'clock in the morning. But
another persecutor came, and then another and another, and finally
believing that the general enthusiasm would permit no one to slumber
in peace, I got up and went sleepily on deck. It was five and a half
o'clock now, and a raw, blustering morning. The passengers were
huddled about the smoke-stacks and fortified behind ventilators, and
all were wrapped in wintry costumes, and looking sleepy and unhappy in
the pitiless gale and the drenching spray.
The island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain of mud
standing up out of the dull mists of the sea. But as we bore down upon
it, the sun came out and made it a beautiful picture- a mass of
green farms and meadows that swelled up to a height of fifteen hundred
feet, and mingled its upper outlines with the clouds. It was ribbed
with sharp, steep ridges, and cloven with narrow canons, and here
and there on the heights, rocky upheavals shaped themselves into mimic
battlements and castles; and out of rifted clouds came broad shafts of
sunlight, that painted summit and slope and glen with bands of fire,
and left belts of somber shade between. It was the aurora borealis
of the frozen pole exiled to a summer land!
We skirted around two-thirds of the island, four miles from shore,
and all the opera-glasses in the ship were called into requisition
to settle disputes as to whether mossy spots on the uplands were
groves of trees or groves of weeds, or whether the white villages down
by the sea were really villages or only the clustering tombstones of
cemeteries. Finally, we stood to sea and bore away for San Miguel, and
Flores shortly became a dome of mud again, and sank down among the
mists and disappeared. But to many a seasick passenger it was good
to see the green hills again, and all were more cheerful after this
episode than anybody could have expected them to be, considering how
sinfully early they had gotten up.
But we had to change our purpose about San Miguel, for a storm
came up about noon that so tossed and pitched the vessel that common
sense dictated a run for shelter. Therefore we steered for the nearest
island of the group- Fayal (the people there pronounce it Fy-all,
and put the accent on the first syllable). We anchored in the open
roadstead of Horta, half a mile from the shore. The town has eight
thousand to ten thousand inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle
cozily in a sea of fresh green vegetation, and no village could look
prettier or more attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheater
of hills which are three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and
carefully cultivated clear to their summits- not a foot of soil left
idle. Every farm and every acre is cut up into little square
inclosures by stone walls, whose duty it is to protect the growing
products from the destructive gales that blow there. These hundreds of
green squares, marked by their black lava walls, make the hills look
like vast checker-boards.
The islands belong to Portugal, and everything in Fayal has
Portuguese characteristics about it. But more of that anon. A swarm of
swarthy, noisy, lying, shoulder-shrugging, gesticulating Portuguese
boatmen, with brass rings in their ears, and fraud in their hearts,
climbed the ship's sides, and various parties of us contracted with
them to take us ashore at so much a head, silver coin of any
country. We landed under the walls of a little fort, armed with
batteries of twelve and thirty-two pounders, which Horta considered
a most formidable institution, but if we were ever to get after it
with one of our turreted monitors, they would have to move it out in
the country if they wanted it where they could go and find it again
when they needed it. The group on the pier was a rusty one- men and
women, and boys and girls, all ragged and barefoot, uncombed and
unclean, and by instinct, education, and profession, beggars. They
trooped after us, and never more, while we tarried in Fayal, did we
get rid of them. We walked up the middle of the principal street,
and these vermin surrounded us on all sides, and glared upon us; and
every moment excited couples shot ahead of the procession to get a
good look back, just as village boys do when they accompany the
elephant on his advertising trip from street to street. It was very
flattering to me to be part of the material for such a sensation. Here
and there in the doorways we saw women, with fashionable Portuguese
hoods on. This hood is of thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the
same stuff, and is a marvel of ugliness. It stands up high, and
spreads far abroad, and is unfathomably deep. It fits like a circus
tent, and a woman's head is hidden away in it like the man's who
prompts the singers from his tin shed in the stage of an opera.
There is no particle of trimming about this monstrous capote, as
they call it- it is just a plain, ugly dead-blue mass of sail, and a
woman can't go within eight points of the wind with one of them on;
she has to go before the wind or not at all. The general style of
the capote is the same in all the islands, and will remain so for
the next ten thousand years, but each island shapes its capotes just
enough differently from the others to enable an observer to tell at
a glance what particular island a lady hails from.
The Portuguese pennies or reis (pronounced rays) are prodigious.
It takes one thousand reis to make a dollar, and all financial
estimates are made in reis. We did not know this until after we had
found it out through Blucher. Blucher said he was so happy and so
grateful to be on solid land once more, that he wanted to give a
feast- said he had heard it was a cheap land, and he was bound to have
a grand banquet. He invited nine of us, and we ate an excellent dinner
at the principal hotel. In the midst of the jollity produced by good
cigars, good wine, and passable anecdotes, the landlord presented
his bill. Blucher glanced at it and his countenance fell. He took
another look to assure himself that his senses had not deceived him,
and then read the items aloud, in a faltering voice, while the roses
in his cheeks turned to ashes:
"'Ten dinners, at 600 reis, 6,000 reis!' Ruin and desolation!"
"'Twenty-five cigars, at 100 reis, 2,500 reis!' Oh, my sainted
mother!"
"'Eleven bottles of wine, at 1,200 reis, 13,200 reis!' Be with us
all!"
"'TOTAL, TWENTY-ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED REIS!' The suffering
Moses!- there ain't money enough in the ship to pay that bill! Go-
leave me to my misery, boys, I am a ruined community."
I think it was the blankest-looking party I ever saw. Nobody could
say a word. It was as if every soul had been stricken dumb. Wine
glasses descended slowly to the table, their contents untasted. Cigars
dropped unnoticed from nerveless fingers. Each man sought his
neighbor's eye, but found in it no ray of hope, no encouragement. At
last the fearful silence was broken. The shadow of a desperate resolve
settled upon Blucher's countenance like a cloud, and he rose up and
said:
"Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I'll never, never
stand it. Here's a hundred and fifty dollars, sir, and it's all you'll
get- I'll swim in blood, before I'll pay a cent more."
Our spirits rose and the landlord's fell- at least we thought so; he
was confused at any rate, notwithstanding he had not understood a word
that had been said. He glanced from the little pile of gold pieces
to Blucher several times, and then went out. He must have visited an
American, for, when he returned, he brought back his bill translated
into a language that a Christian could understand- thus:
-
10 dinners, 6,000 reis, or................. $6.00
25 cigars, 2,500 reis, or.................. 2.50
11 bottles wine, 13,200 reis, or........... 13.20
-
Total 21,700 reis, or............... $21.70
-
Happiness reigned once more in Blucher's dinner-party. More
refreshments were ordered.
CHAPTER VI
THE POOR, SHIFTLESS, LAZY AZOREANS
-
I THINK the Azores must be very little known in America. Out of
our whole ship's company there was not a solitary individual who
knew anything whatever about them. Some of the party, well read
concerning most other lands, had no other information about the Azores
than that they were a group of nine or ten small islands far out in
the Atlantic, something more than half-way between New York and
Gibraltar. That was all. These considerations move me to put in a
paragraph of dry facts just here.
The community is eminently Portuguese- that is to say, it is slow,
poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor,
appointed by the King of Portugal; and also a military governor, who
can assume supreme control and suspend the civil government at his
pleasure. The islands contain a population of about 200,000, almost
entirely Portuguese. Everything is staid and settled, for the
country was one hundred years old when Columbus discovered America.
The principal crop is corn, and they raise it and grind it just as
their great-great-great-grandfathers did. They plow with a board
slightly shod with iron; their trifling little harrows are drawn by
men and women; small windmills grind the corn, ten bushels a day,
and there is one assistant superintendent to feed the mill and a
general superintendent to stand by and keep him from going to sleep.
When the wind changes they hitch on some donkeys, and actually turn
the whole upper half of the mill around until the sails are in
proper position, instead of fixing the concern so that the sails could
be moved instead of the mill. Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after
the fashion prevalent in the time of Methuselah. There is not a
wheel-barrow in the land- they carry everything on their heads, or
on donkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid
blocks of wood and whose axles turn with the wheel. There is not a
modern plow in the islands, or a threshing-machine. All attempts to
introduce them have failed. The good Catholic Portuguese crossed
himself and prayed God to shield him from all blasphemous desire to
know more than his father did before him. The climate is mild; they
never have snow or ice, and I saw no chimneys in the town. The donkeys
and the men, women, and children of a family, all eat and sleep in the
same room, and are unclean, are ravaged by vermin, and are truly
happy. The people lie, and cheat the stranger, and are desperately
ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for their dead. The latter
trait shows how little better they are than the donkeys they eat and
sleep with. The only well-dressed Portuguese in the camp are the
half a dozen well-to-do families, the Jesuit priests, and the soldiers
of the little garrison. The wages of a laborer are twenty to
twenty-four cents a day, and those of a good mechanic about twice as
much. They count it in reis at a thousand to the dollar, and this
makes them rich and contented. Fine grapes used to grow in the
islands, and an excellent wine was made and exported. But a disease
killed all the vines fifteen years ago, and since that time no wine
has been made. The islands being wholly of volcanic origin, the soil
is necessarily very rich. Nearly every foot of ground is under
cultivation, and two or three crops a year of each article are
produced, but nothing is exported save a few oranges- chiefly to
England. Nobody comes here, and nobody goes away. News is a thing
unknown in Fayal. A thirst for it is a passion equally unknown. A
Portuguese of average intelligence inquired if our civil war was over?
because, he said, somebody had told him it was- or, at least, it ran
in his mind, that somebody had told him something like that! And
when a passenger gave an officer of the garrison copies of the
Tribune, the Herald, and Times, he was surprised to find later news in
them from Lisbon than he had just received by the little monthly
steamer. He was told that it came by cable. He said he knew they had
tried to lay a cable ten years ago, but it had been in his mind,
somehow, that they hadn't succeeded!
It is in communities like this that Jesuit humbuggery flourishes. We
visited a Jesuit cathedral nearly two hundred years old, and found
in it a piece of the veritable cross upon which our Saviour was
crucified. It was polished and hard, and in as excellent a state of
preservation as if the dread tragedy on Calvary had occurred yesterday
instead of eighteen centuries ago. But these confiding people
believe in that piece of wood unhesitatingly.
In a chapel of the cathedral is an altar with facings of solid
silver- at least, they call it so, and I think myself it would go a
couple of hundred to the ton (to speak after the fashion of the silver
miners), and before it is kept forever burning a small lamp. A
devout lady who died, left money and contracted for unlimited masses
for the repose of her soul, and also stipulated that this lamp
should be kept lighted always, day and night. She did all this
before she died, you understand. It is a very small lamp, and a very
dim one, and it could not work her much damage, I think, if it went
out altogether.
The great altar of the cathedral, and also three or four minor ones,
are a perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have
a swarm of rusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the
filigree work, some on one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey
look in the other, and some with two or three fingers gone, and some
with not enough nose left to blow- all of them crippled and
discouraged, and fitter subjects for the hospital than the cathedral.
The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with
figures of almost life-size, very elegantly wrought, and dressed in
the fanciful costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history
of something or somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read
the story. The old father, reposing under a stone close by, dated
1686, might have told us if he could have risen. But he didn't.
As we came down through the town, we encountered a squad of little
donkeys ready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the
least. They consisted of a sort of saw-buck, with a small mattress
on it, and this furniture covered about half the donkey. There were no
stirrups, but really such supports were not needed- to use such a
saddle was the next thing to riding a dinner-table- there was ample
support clear out to one's knee-joints. A pack of ragged Portuguese
muleteers crowded around us, offering their beasts at half a dollar an
hour- more rascality to the stranger, for the market price is
sixteen cents. Half a dozen of us mounted the ungainly affairs, and
submitted to the indignity of making a ridiculous spectacle of
ourselves through the principal streets of a town of 10,000
inhabitants.
We started. It was not a trot, a gallop, or a canter, but a
stampede, and made up of all possible or conceivable gaits. No spurs
were necessary. There was a muleteer to every donkey and a dozen
volunteers besides, and they banged the donkeys with their
goad-sticks, and pricked them with their spikes, and shouted something
that sounded like "Sekki-yah!" and kept up a din and a racket that was
worse than Bedlam itself. These rascals were all on foot, but no
matter, they were always up to time- they can outrun and outlast a
donkey. Altogether ours was a lively picturesque procession, and
drew crowded audiences to the balconies wherever we went.
Blucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast scampered
zigzag across the road and the others ran into him; he scraped Blucher
against carts and the comers of houses; the road was fenced in with
high stone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one
side and then on the other, but never once took the middle; he finally
came to the house he was born in and darted into the parlor,
scraping Blucher off at the doorway. After remounting, Blucher said to
the muleteer, "Now, that's enough, you know; you go slow hereafter."
But the fellow knew no English and did not understand, so he simply
said, "Sekki-yah!" and the donkey was off again like a shot. He turned
a corner suddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak
truly, every mule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was
piled up in a heap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys
is of little more consequence than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all
stood still after the catastrophe, and waited for their dismembered
saddles to be patched up and put on by the noisy muleteers. Blucher
was pretty angry, and wanted to swear, but every time he opened his
mouth his animal did so also, and let off a series of brays that
drowned all other sounds.
It was fun, skurrying around the breezy hills and through the
beautiful canons. There was that rare thing, novelty, about it; it was
a fresh, new, exhilarating sensation, this donkey-riding, and worth
a hundred worn and threadbare home pleasures.
The roads were a wonder, and well they might be. Here was an
island with only a handful of people in it- 25,000- and yet such
fine roads do not exist in the United States outside of Central
Park. Everywhere you go, in any direction, you find either a hard,
smooth, level thoroughfare, just sprinkled with black lava sand, and
bordered with little gutters neatly paved with small smooth pebbles,
or compactly paved ones like Broadway. They talk much of the Russ
pavement in New York, and call it a new invention- yet here they
have been using it in this remote little isle of the sea for two
hundred years! Every street in Horta is handsomely paved with the
heavy Russ blocks, and the surface is neat and true as a floor- not
marred by holes like Broadway. And every road is fenced in by tall,
solid lava walls, which will last a thousand years in this land
where frost is unknown. They are very thick, and are often plastered
and whitewashed, and capped with projecting slabs of cut stone.
Trees from gardens above hang their swaying tendrils down, and
contrast their bright green with the whitewash or the black lava of
the walls, and make them beautiful. The trees and vines stretch across
these narrow roadways sometimes, and so shut out the sun that you seem
to be riding through a tunnel. The pavements, the roads, and the
bridges are all government work.
The bridges are of a single span- a single arch- of cut stone,
without a support, and paved on top with flags of lava and
ornamental pebble work. Everywhere are walls, walls, walls,- and all
of them tasteful and handsome- and eternally substantial; and
everywhere are those marvelous pavements, so neat, so smooth, and so
indestructible. And if ever roads and streets, and the outsides of
houses, were perfectly free from any sign or semblance of dirt or dust
or mud, or uncleanliness of any kind, it is Horta, it is Fayal. The
lower classes of the people, in their persons and their domiciles, are
not clean- but there it stops- the town and the island are miracles of
cleanliness.
We arrived home again finally, after a ten-mile excursion, and the
irrepressible muleteers scampered at our heels through the main
street, goading the donkeys, shouting the everlasting "Sekki-yah," and
singing "John Brown's Body" in ruinous English.
When we were dismounted and it came to settling, the shouting and
jawing and swearing and quarreling among the muleteers and with us,
was nearly deafening. One fellow would demand a dollar an hour for the
use of his donkey; another claimed half a dollar for pricking him
up, another a quarter for helping in that service, and about
fourteen guides presented bills for showing us the way through the
town and its environs; and every vagrant of them was more
vociferous, and more vehement, and more frantic in gesture than his
neighbor. We paid one guide, and paid for one muleteer to each donkey.
The mountains on some of the islands are very high. We sailed
along the shore of the Island of Pico, under a stately green pyramid
that rose up with one unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude
of 7,613 feet, and thrust its summit above the white clouds like an
island adrift in a fog!
We got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, etc., in
these Azores, of course. But I will desist. I am not here to write
patent-office reports.
We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five or six
days out from the Azores.
CHAPTER VII
GIBRALTAR- A "GOB" ON A SHINGLE
-
A WEEK of buffeting a tempestuous and relentless sea; a week of
seasickness and deserted cabins; of lonely quarter-decks drenched with
spray- spray so ambitious that it even coated the smokestacks thick
with a white crust of salt to their very tops; a week of shivering
in the shelter of the lifeboats and deck-houses by day, and blowing
suffocating "clouds" and boisterously performing at dominoes in the
smoking-room at night.
And the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There
was no thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen
whistling of the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the
seething waters. But the vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to
heaven- then paused an instant that seemed a century, and plunged
headlong down again, as from a precipice. The sheeted sprays
drenched the decks like rain. The blackness of darkness was
everywhere. At long intervals a flash of lightning clove it with a
quivering line of fire, that revealed a heaving world of water where
was nothing before, kindled the dusky cordage to glittering silver,
and lit up the faces of the men with a ghastly luster!
Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the night winds
and the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the
night, and it seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the
wild tempest and see the peril that threatened than to be shut up in
the sepulchral cabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors
that were abroad on the ocean. And once out- once where they could see
the ship struggling in the strong grasp of the storm- once where
they could hear the shriek of the winds, and face the driving spray
and look out upon the majestic picture the lightnings disclosed,
they were prisoners to a fierce fascination they could not resist, and
so remained. It was a wild night- and a very, very long one.
Everybody was sent scampering to the deck at seven o'clock this
lovely morning of the 30th of June with the glad news that land was in
sight! It was a rare thing and a joyful, to see all the ship's
family abroad once more, albeit the happiness that sat upon every
countenance could only partly conceal the ravages which that long
siege of storms had wrought there. But dull eyes soon sparkled with
pleasure, pallid cheeks flushed again, and frames weakened by sickness
gathered new life from the quickening influences of the bright,
fresh morning. Yea, and from a still more potent influence: the worn
castaways were to see the blessed land again!- and to see it was to
bring back that mother-land that was in all their thoughts.
Within the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gibraltar,
the tall yellow-splotched hills of Africa on our right, with their
bases veiled in a blue haze and their summits swathed in clouds- the
same being according to Scripture, which says that "clouds and
darkness are over the land." The words were spoken of this
particular portion of Africa, I believe. On our left were the
granite-ribbed domes of old Spain. The Strait is only thirteen miles
wide in its narrowest part.
At short intervals, along the Spanish shore, were quaint-looking old
stone towers- Moorish, we thought- but learned better afterward. In
former times the Morocco rascals used to coast along the Spanish
Main in their boats till a safe opportunity seemed to present
itself, and then dart in and capture a Spanish village, and carry
off all the pretty women they could find. It was a pleasant
business, and was very popular. The Spaniards built these watch-towers
on the hills to enable them to keep a sharper lookout on the
Moroccan speculators.
The picture, on the other hand, was very beautiful to eyes weary
of the changeless sea, and by and by the ship's company grew
wonderfully cheerful. But while we stood admiring the cloud-capped
peaks and the lowlands robed in misty gloom, a finer picture burst
upon us and chained every eye like a magnet- a stately ship, with
canvas piled on canvas till she was one towering mass of bellying
sail! She came speeding over the sea like a great bird. Africa and
Spain were forgotten. All homage was for the beautiful stranger. While
everybody gazed, she swept superbly by and flung the Stars and Stripes
to the breeze! Quicker than thought, hats and handkerchiefs flashed in
the air, and a cheer went up! She was beautiful before- she was
radiant now. Many a one on our decks knew then for the first time
how tame a sight his country's flag is at home compared to what it
is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision of home itself
and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of
sluggish blood!
We were approaching the famed Pillars of Hercules, and already the
African one, "Ape's Hill," a grand old mountain with summit streaked
with granite ledges, was in sight. The other, the great Rock of
Gibraltar, was yet to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of
Hercules the head of navigation and the end of the world. The
information the ancients didn't have was very voluminous. Even the
prophets wrote book after book and epistle after epistle, yet never
once hinted at the existence of a great continent on our side of the
water; yet they must have known it was there, I should think.
In a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock, standing
seemingly in the center of the wide strait and apparently washed on
all sides by the sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed
no tedious traveled parrot to tell us it was Gibraltar. There could
not be two rocks like that in one kingdom.
The Rock of Gibraltar is about a mile and a half long, I should say,
by 1,400 to 1,500 feet high, and a quarter of a mile wide at its base.
One side and one end of it come about as straight up out of the sea as
the side of a house, the other end is irregular and the other side
is a steep slant which an army would find very difficult to climb.
At the foot of this slant is the walled town of Gibraltar- or rather
the town occupies part of the slant. Everywhere- on hillside, in the
precipice, by the sea, on the heights,- everywhere you choose to look,
Gibraltar is clad with masonry and bristling with guns. It makes a
striking and lively picture, from whatsoever point you contemplate it.
It is pushed out into the sea on the end of a flat, narrow strip of
land, and is suggestive of a "gob" of mud on the end of a shingle. A
few hundred yards of this flat ground at its base belong to the
English, and then, extending across the strip from the Atlantic to the
Mediterranean, a distance of a quarter of a mile, comes the "Neutral
Ground," a space two or three hundred yards wide, which is free to
both parties.
"Are you going through Spain to Paris?" That question was bandied
about the ship day and night from Fayal to Gibraltar, and I thought
I never could get so tired of hearing any one combination of words
again, or more tired of answering, "I don't know."
At the last moment six or seven had sufficient decision of character
to make up their minds to go, and did go, and I felt a sense of relief
at once- it was forever too late, now, and I could make up my mind
at my leisure, not to go. I must have a prodigious quantity of mind;
it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.
But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We had no sooner gotten
rid of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar guides started another- a
tiresome repetition of a legend that had nothing very astonishing
about it, even in the first place: "That high hill yonder is called
the Queen's Chair; it is because one of the queens of Spain placed her
chair there when the French and Spanish troops were besieging
Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the spot till the
English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English hadn't
been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day, she'd
have had to break her oath or die up there."
We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and
entered the subterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the
rock. These galleries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at
short intervals in them great guns frown out upon sea and town through
portholes five or six hundred feet above the ocean. There is a mile or
so of this subterranean work, and it must have cost a vast deal of
money and labor. The gallery guns command the peninsula and the
harbors of both oceans, but they might as well not be there, I
should think, for an army could hardly climb the perpendicular wall of
the rock anyhow. Those lofty portholes afford superb views of the sea,
though. At one place, where a jutting crag was hollowed out into a
great chamber whose furniture was huge cannon and whose windows were
portholes, a glimpse was caught of a hill not far away, and a
soldier said:
"That high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair; it is because
a queen of Spain placed her chair there once, when the French and
Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move
from the spot till the English flag was lowered from the fortresses.
If the English hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag for a
few hours one day, she'd have had to break her oath or die up there."
On the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good while, and
no doubt the mules were tired. They had a right to be. The military
road was good, but rather steep, and there was a good deal of it.
The view from the narrow ledge was magnificent; from it vessels
seeming like the tiniest little toy boats were turned into noble ships
by the telescopes; and other vessels that were fifty miles away, and
even sixty, they said, and invisible to the naked eye, could be
clearly distinguished through those same telescopes. Below, on one
side, we looked down upon an endless mass of batteries, and on the
other straight down to the sea.
While I was resting ever so comfortably on a rampart, and cooling my
baking head in the delicious breeze, an officious guide belonging to
another party came up and said:
"Senor, that high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair-"
"Sir, I am a helpless orphan in a foreign land. Have pity on me.
Don't- now don't inflict that most IN-FERNAL old legend on me any more
today!"
There- I had used strong language, after promising I would never
do so again; but the provocation was more than human nature could
bear. If you had been bored so, when you had the noble panorama of
Spain and Africa and the blue Mediterranean spread abroad at your
feet, and wanted to gaze, and enjoy, and surfeit yourself with its
beauty in silence, you might have even burst into stronger language
than I did.
Gibraltar has stood several protracted sieges, one of them of nearly
four years' duration (it failed), and the English only captured it
by stratagem. The wonder is that anybody should ever dream of trying
so impossible a project as the taking it by assault- and yet it has
been tried more than once.
The Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a stanch
old castle of theirs of that date still frowns from the middle of
the town, with moss-grown battlements and sides well scarred by
shots fired in battles and sieges that are forgotten now. A secret
chamber, in the rock behind it, was discovered some time ago, which
contained a sword of exquisite workmanship, and some quaint old
armor of a fashion that antiquaries are not acquainted with, though it
is supposed to be Roman. Roman armor and Roman relics, of various
kinds, have been found in a cave in the sea extremity of Gibraltar;
history says Rome held this part of the country about the Christian
era, and these things seem to confirm the statement.
In that cave, also, are found human bones, crusted with a very
thick, stony coating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men
not only lived before the flood, but as much as ten thousand years
before it. It may be true- it looks reasonable enough- but as long
as those parties can't vote any more, the matter can be of no great
public interest. In this cave, likewise, are found skeletons and
fossils of animals that exist in every part of Africa, yet within
memory and tradition have never existed in any portion of Spain save
this lone peak of Gibraltar! So the theory is that the channel between
Gibraltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the low, neutral neck
between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was once ocean, and,
of course, that these African animals, being over at Gibraltar
(after rock, perhaps- there is plenty there), got closed out when
the great change occurred. The hills in Africa, across the channel,
are full of apes, and there are now, and always have been, apes on the
rock of Gibraltar- but not elsewhere in Spain! The subject is an
interesting one.
There is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6,000 or 7,000 men, and
so uniforms of flaming red are plenty; and red and blue, and undress
costumes of snowy white, and also the queer uniform of the
bare-kneed Highlander; and one sees soft-eyed Spanish girls from San
Roque, and veiled Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties)
from Tarifa, and turbaned, sashed, and trousered Moorish merchants
from Fez, and long-robed, bare-legged, ragged Mohammedan vagabonds
from Tetouan and Tangier, some brown, some yellow, and some as black
as virgin ink- and Jews from all around, in gaberdine, skull-cap,
and slippers, just as they are in pictures and theaters, and just as
they were three thousand years ago, no doubt. You can easily
understand that a tribe (somehow our pilgrims suggest that expression,
because they march in a straggling procession through these foreign
places with such an Indian-like air of complacency and independence
about them) like ours, made up from fifteen or sixteen states of the
Union, found enough to stare at in this shifting panorama of fashion
to-day.
Speaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or two people
among us who are sometimes an annoyance. However, I do not count the
Oracle in that list. I will explain that the Oracle is an innocent old
ass who eats for four and looks wiser than the whole Academy of France
would have any right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word
when he can think of a longer one, and never by any possible chance
knows the meaning of any long word he uses, or ever gets it in the
right place; yet he will serenely venture an opinion on the most
abstruse subject, and back it up complacently with quotations from
authors who never existed, and finally when cornered will slide to the
other side of the question, say he has been there all the time, and
come back at you with your own spoken arguments, only with the big
words all tangled, and play them in your very teeth as original with
himself. He reads a chapter in the guide-books, mixes the facts all
up, with his bad memory, and then goes off to inflict the whole mess
on somebody as wisdom which has been festering in his brain for years,
and which he gathered in college from erudite authors who are dead now
and out of print. This morning at breakfast he pointed out of the
window, and said:
"Did you see that there hill out there on that African coast? It's
one of them Pillows of Herkewls, I should say- and there's the
ultimate one alongside of it."
"The ultimate one- that is a good word- but the Pillars are not both
on the same side of the strait." (I saw he had been deceived by a
carelessly written sentence in the Guide-Book.)
"Well, it ain't for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it
that way, and some states it different. Old Gibbons don't say
nothing about it,- just shirks it complete- Gibbons always done that
when he got stuck- but there is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, he
says that they was both on the same side, and Trinculian, and
Sobaster, and Syraccus, and Longomarganbl-"
"Oh, that will do- that's enough. If you have got your hand in for
inventing authors and testimony, I have nothing more to say- let
them be on the same side."
We don't mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can tolerate the
Oracle very easily; but we have a poet and a good-natured,
enterprising idiot on board, and they do distress the company. The one
gives copies of his verses to consuls, commanders, hotel-keepers,
Arabs, Dutch,- to anybody, in fact, who will submit to a grievous
infliction most kindly meant. His poetry is all very well on
ship-board, notwithstanding when he wrote an "Ode to the Ocean in a
Storm" in one half-hour, and an "Apostrophe to the Rooster in the
Waist of the Ship" in the next, the transition was considered to be
rather abrupt; but when he sends an invoice of rhymes to the
governor of Fayal and another to the commander-in-chief and other
dignitaries in Gibraltar, with the compliments of the Laureate of
the Ship, it is not popular with the passengers.
The other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not
bright, not learned, and not wise. He will be, though, some day, if he
recollects the answers to all his questions. He is known about the
ship as the "Interrogation Point," and this by constant use has become
shortened to "Interrogation." He has distinguished himself twice
already. In Fayal they pointed out a hill and told him it was eight
hundred feet high and eleven hundred feet long. And they told him
there was a tunnel two thousand feet long and one thousand feet high
running through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He repeated
it to everybody, discussed it, and read it from his notes. Finally, he
took a useful hint from this remark which a thoughtful old pilgrim
made:
"Well, yes, it is a little remarkable- singular tunnel altogether-
stands up out of the top of the hill about two hundred feet, and one
end of it sticks out of the hill about nine hundred!"
Here in Gibraltar he corners these educated British officers and
badgers them with braggadocio about America and the wonders she can
perform. He told one of them a couple of our gunboats could come
here and knock Gibraltar into the Mediterranean sea!
At this present moment, half a dozen of us are taking a private
pleasure excursion of our own devising. We form rather more than
half the list of white passengers on board a small steamer bound for
the venerable Moorish town of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more
absolutely certain than that we are enjoying ourselves. One cannot
do otherwise who speeds over these sparkling waters, and breathes
the soft atmosphere of this sunny land. Care cannot assail us here. We
are out of its jurisdiction.
We even steamed recklessly by the frowning fortress of Malabat (a
stronghold of the Emperor of Morocco), without a twinge of fear. The
whole garrison turned out under arms, and assumed a threatening
attitude- yet still we did not fear. The entire garrison marched and
countermarched, within the rampart, in full view- yet
notwithstanding even this, we never flinched.
I suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of
the garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was
Mehemet Ali Ben Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some
more garrisons to help him; but they said no; he had nothing to do but
hold the place, and that he was competent to do that; had done it
two years already. That was evidence which one could not well
refute. There is nothing like reputation.
Every now and then, my glove purchase in Gibraltar last night
intrudes itself upon me. Dan and the ship's surgeon and I had been
up to the great square, listening to the music of the fine military
bands, and contemplating English and Spanish female loveliness and
fashion, and, at 9 o'clock, were on our way to the theater, when we
met the General, the Judge, the Commodore, the Colonel, and the
Commissioner of the United States of America to Europe, Asia, and
Africa, who had been to the Club House, to register their several
titles and impoverish the bill of fare; and they told us to go over to
the little variety store, near the Hall of Justice, and buy some kid
gloves. They said they were elegant, and very moderate in price. It
seemed a stylish thing to go to the theater in kid gloves, and we
acted upon the hint. A very handsome young lady in the store offered
me a pair of blue gloves. I did not want blue, but she said they would
look very pretty on a hand like mine. The remark touched me
tenderly. I glanced furtively at my hand, and somehow it did seem
rather a comely member. I tried a glove on my left, and blushed a
little. Manifestly the size was too small for me. But I felt gratified
when she said:
"Oh, it is just right!"- yet I knew it was no such thing.
I tugged at it diligently, but it was discouraging work. She said:
"Ah! I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves- but some
gentlemen are so awkward about putting them on."
It was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting
on the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort, and tore the
glove from the base of the thumb into the palm of the hand- and
tried to hide the rent. She kept up her compliments, and I kept up
my determination to deserve them or die:
"Ah, you have had experience!" [A rip down the back of the hand.]
"They are just right for you- your hand is very small- if they tear
you need not pay for them." [A rent across the middle.] "I can
always tell when a gentleman understands putting on kid gloves.
There is a grace about it that only comes with long practice." [The
whole afterguard of the glove "fetched away," as the sailors say,
the fabric parted across the knuckles, and nothing was left but a
melancholy ruin.]
I was too much flattered to make an exposure, and throw the
merchandise on the angel's hands. I was hot, vexed, confused, but
still happy; but I hated the other boys for taking such an absorbing
interest in the proceedings. I wished they were in Jericho. I felt
exquisitely mean when I said cheerfully:
"This one does very well; it fits elegantly. I like a glove that
fits. No, never mind, ma'am, never mind; I'll put the other on in
the street. It is warm here."
It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I paid the
bill, and as I passed out with a fascinating bow, I thought I detected
a light in the woman's eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked
back from the street, and she was laughing all to herself about
something or other, I said to myself, with withering sarcasm, "Oh,
certainly; you know how to put on kid gloves, don't you?- a
self-complacent ass, ready to be flattered out of your senses by every
petticoat that chooses to take the trouble to do it!"
The silence of the boys annoyed me. Finally, Dan said, musingly:
"Some gentlemen don't know how to put on kid gloves at all; but some
do."
And the doctor said (to the moon, I thought):
"But it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting
on kid gloves."
Dan soliloquized, after a pause:
"Ah, yes; there is a grace about it that only comes with long,
very long practice."
"Yes, indeed, I've noticed that when a man hauls on a kid glove like
he was dragging a cat out of an ash-hole by the tail, he understands
putting on kid gloves; he's had ex-"
"Boys, enough of a thing's enough! You think you are very smart, I
suppose, but I don't. And if you go and tell any of those old
gossips in the ship about this thing, I'll never forgive you for it;
that's all."
They let me alone then, for the time being. We always let each other
alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they
had bought gloves, too, as I did. We threw all the purchases away
together this morning. They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all
over with broad yellow splotches, and could neither stand wear nor
public exhibition. We had entertained an angel unawares, but we did
not take her in. She did that for us.
Tangier! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to
carry us ashore on their backs from the small boats.
CHAPTER VIII
MOROCCO, WHERE RICHES HAVE STINGS
-
THIS is royal! Let those who went up through Spain make the best
of it- these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party
well enough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present.
Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere
we have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but
always with things and people intermixed that we were familiar with
before, and so the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its
force. We wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign-
foreign from top to bottom- foreign from center to circumference-
foreign inside and outside and all around- nothing anywhere about it
to dilute its foreignness- nothing to remind us of any other people or
any other land under the sun. And lo! in Tangier we have found it.
Here is not the slightest thing that ever we have seen save in
pictures- and we always mistrusted the pictures before. We cannot
any more. The pictures used to seem exaggerations- they seemed too
weird and fanciful for reality. But behold, they were not wild enough-
they were not fanciful enough- they have not told half the story.
Tangier is a foreign land if ever there was one; and the true spirit
of it can never be found in any book save the Arabian Nights. Here are
no white men visible, yet swarms of humanity are all about us. Here is
a packed and jammed city inclosed in a massive stone wall which is
more than a thousand years old. All the houses nearly are one and
two story; made of thick walls of stone; plastered outside; square
as a dry-goods box; flat as a floor on top; no cornices; whitewashed
all over- a crowded city of snowy tombs! And the doors are arched with
a peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures; the floors are laid in
vari-colored diamond flags; in tessellated many-colored porcelain
squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles and broad
bricks that time cannot wear; there is no furniture in the rooms (of
Jewish dwellings) save divans- what there is in Moorish ones no man
may know; within their sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And
the streets are oriental- some of them three feet wide, some six,
but only two that are over a dozen; a man can blockade the most of
them by extending his body across them. Isn't it an oriental picture?
There are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately Moors,
proud of a history that goes back to the night of time; and Jews,
whose fathers fled hither centuries upon centuries ago; and swarthy
Riffians from the mountains- born cutthroats- and original, genuine
Negroes, as black as Moses; and howling dervishes, and a hundred
breeds of Arabs- all sorts and descriptions of people that are foreign
and curious to look upon.
And their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here is a
bronzed Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously embroidered
jacket, gold and crimson sash of many folds, wrapped round and round
his waist, trousers that only come a little below his knee, and yet
have twenty yards of stuff in them, ornamented scimitar, bare shins,
stockingless feet, yellow slippers, and gun of preposterous length-
a mere soldier!- I thought he was the Emperor at least. And here are
aged Moors with flowing white beards, and long white robes with vast
cowls; and Bedouins with long, cowled, striped cloaks, and Negroes and
Riffians with heads clean-shaven, except a kinky scalp-lock back of
the ear, or rather up on the after comer of the skull, and all sorts
of barbarians in all sorts of weird costumes, and all more or less
ragged. And here are Moorish women who are enveloped from head to foot
in coarse white robes and whose sex can only be determined by the fact
that they only leave one eye visible, and never look at men of their
own race, or are looked at by them in public. Here are five thousand
Jews in blue gaberdines, sashes about their waists, slippers upon
their feet, little skull-caps upon the backs of their heads, hair
combed down on the forehead, and cut straight across the middle of
it from side to side- the self-same fashion their Tangier ancestors
have worn for I don't know how many bewildering centuries. Their
feet and ankles are bare. Their noses are all hooked, and hooked
alike. They all resemble each other so much that one could almost
believe they were of one family. Their women are plump and pretty, and
do smile upon a Christian in a way which is in the last degree
comforting.
What a funny old town it is! It seems like profanation to laugh
and jest and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary
relics. Only the stately phraseology and the measured speech of the
sons of the Prophet are suited to a venerable antiquity like this.
Here is a crumbling wall that was old when Columbus discovered
America; was old when Peter the Hermit roused the knightly men of
the Middle Ages to arm for the first Crusade; was old when Charlemagne
and his paladins beleaguered enchanted castles and battled with giants
and genii in the fabled days of the olden time; was old when Christ
and his disciples walked the earth; stood where it stands to-day
when the lips of Memnon were vocal, and men bought and sold in the
streets of ancient Thebes!
The Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the English, Moors, Romans,
all have battled for Tangier- all have won it and lost it. Here is a
ragged, oriental-looking Negro from some desert place in interior
Africa, filling his goatskin with water from a stained and battered
fountain built by the Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a
ruined arch of a bridge built by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred
years ago. Men who had seen the infant Saviour in the Virgin's arms
have stood upon it, maybe.
Near it are the ruins of a dockyard where Caesar repaired his
ships and loaded them with grain when he invaded Britain, fifty
years before the Christian era.
Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seemed thronged
with the phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting upon a spot
where stood a monument which was seen and described by Roman
historians less than two thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed:
"WE ARE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT HAVE BEEN DRIVEN OUT OF THE
LAND OF CANAAN BY THE JEWISH ROBBER, JOSHUA."
Joshua drove them out, and they came here. Not many leagues from
here is a tribe of Jews whose ancestors fled thither after an
unsuccessful revolt against King David, and these their descendants
are still under a ban and keep to themselves.
Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years.
And it was a town, though a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his
lion-skin, landed here, four thousand years ago. In these streets he
met Anytus, the king of the country, and brained him with his club,
which was the fashion among gentlemen in those days. The people of
Tangier (called Tingis, then) lived in the rudest possible huts, and
dressed in skins and carried clubs, and were as savage as the wild
beasts they were constantly obliged to war with. But they were a
gentlemanly race, and did no work. They lived on the natural
products of the land. Their king's country residence was at the famous
Garden of Hesperides, seventy miles down the coast from here. The
garden, with its golden apples (oranges), is gone now- no vestige of
it remains. Antiquarians concede that such a personage as Hercules did
exist in ancient times, and agree that he was an enterprising and
energetic man, but decline to believe him a good, bona fide god,
because that would be unconstitutional.
Down here at Cape Spartel is the celebrated cave of Hercules,
where that hero took refuge when he was vanquished and driven out of
the Tangier country. It is full of inscriptions in the dead languages,
which fact makes me think Hercules could not have traveled much,
else he would not have kept a journal.
Five days' journey from here- say two hundred miles- are the ruins
of an ancient city, of whose history there is neither record nor
tradition. And yet its arches, its columns, and its statutes
proclaim it to have been built by an enlightened race.
The general size of a store in Tangier is about that of an
ordinary shower-bath in a civilized land. The Mohammedan merchant,
tin-man, shoemaker, or vender of trifles sits cross-legged on the
floor, and reaches after any article you may want to buy. You can rent
a whole block of these pigeonholes for fifty dollars a month. The
market-people crowd the market-place with their baskets of figs,
dates, melons, apricots, etc., and among them file trains of laden
asses, not much larger, if any, than a Newfoundland dog. The scene
is lively, is picturesque, and smells like a police court. The
Jewish money-changers have their dens close at hand; and all day
long are counting bronze coins and transferring them from one bushel
basket to another. They don't coin much money nowadays, I think. I saw
none but what was dated four or five hundred years back, and was badly
worn and battered. These coins are not very valuable. Jack went out to
get a napoleon changed, so as to have money suited to the general
cheapness of things, and came back and said he had "swamped the
bank; had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head of the firm had
gone on the street to negotiate for the balance of the change." I
bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shilling myself. I am
not proud on account of having so much money, though. I care nothing
for wealth. The Moors have some small silver coins, and also some
silver slugs worth a dollar each. The latter are exceedingly scarce-
so much so that when poor ragged Arabs see one they beg to be
allowed to kiss it.
They have also a small gold coin worth two dollars. And that reminds
me of something. When Morocco is in a state of war, Arab couriers
carry letters through the country, and charge a liberal postage. Every
now and then they fall into the hands of marauding bands and get
robbed. Therefore, warned by experience, as soon as they have
collected two dollars' worth of money they exchange it for one of
those little gold pieces, and when robbers come upon them, swallow it.
The stratagem was good while it was unsuspected, but after that the
marauders simply gave the sagacious United States mail an emetic and
sat down to wait.
The Emperor of Morocco is a soulless despot, and the great
officers under him are despots on a smaller scale. There is no regular
system of taxation, but when the Emperor or the Bashaw wants money,
they levy on some rich man, and he has to furnish the cash or go to
prison. Therefore, few men in Morocco dare to be rich. It is too
dangerous a luxury. Vanity occasionally leads a man to display wealth,
but sooner or later the Emperor trumps up a charge against him- any
sort of one will do- and confiscates his property. Of course, there
are many rich men in the empire, but their money is buried, and they
dress in rags and counterfeit poverty. Every now and then the
Emperor imprisons a man who is suspected of the crime of being rich,
and makes things so uncomfortable for him that he is forced to
discover where he has hidden his money.
Moors and Jews sometimes place themselves under the protection of
the foreign consuls, and then they can flout their riches in the
Emperor's face with impunity.
CHAPTER IX
THE FRENCHMAN'S SACRED CAT-MAT
-
ABOUT the first adventure we had yesterday afternoon, after
landing here, came near finishing that heedless Blucher. We had just
mounted some mules and asses, and started out under the guardianship
of the stately, the princely, the magnificent Hadji Mohammed Lamarty
(may his tribe increase!), when we came upon a fine Moorish mosque,
with tall tower, rich with checker-work of many-colored porcelain, and
every part and portion of the edifice adorned with the quaint
architecture of the Alhambra, and Blucher started to ride into the
open doorway. A startling "Hi-hi!" from our camp followers, and a loud
"Halt!" from an English gentleman in the party, checked the
adventurer, and then we were informed that so dire a profanation is it
for a Christian dog to set foot upon the sacred threshold of a Moorish
mosque, that no amount of purification can ever make it fit for the
faithful to pray in again. Had Blucher succeeded in entering the
place, he would no doubt have been chased through the town and stoned;
and the time has been, and not many years ago either, when a Christian
would have been most ruthlessly slaughtered, if captured in a
mosque. We caught a glimpse of the handsome tessellated pavements
within, and of the devotees performing their ablutions at the
fountains; but even that we took that glimpse was a thing not relished
by the Moorish bystanders.
Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got out of
order. The Moors of Tangier have so degenerated that it has been
long since there was an artificer among them capable of curing so
delicate a patient as a debilitated clock. The great men of the city
met in solemn conclave to consider how the difficulty was to be met.
They discussed the matter thoroughly but arrived at no solution.
Finally, a patriarch arose and said:
"Oh, children of the Prophet, it is known unto you that a
Portuguee dog of a Christian clockmender pollutes the city of
Tangier with his presence. Ye know, also, that when mosques are
builded, asses bear the stones and the cement, and cross the sacred
threshold. Now, therefore, send the Christian dog on all fours, and
barefoot, into the holy place to mend the clock, and let him go as
an ass!"
And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever sees the
inside of a mosque, he will have to cast aside his humanity and go
in his natural character. We visited the jail, and found Moorish
prisoners making mats and |
